Russian attacked medical facility in Kherson kills doctor
Russian forces launched an attack against a medical facility in Kherson, killing a doctor and injuring a nurse, head of the Kherson City Military Administration Roman Mrochko reported on Aug. 1.
"Today at 11:10 a.m., the enemy carried out another attack against peaceful residents of our community!" Mrochko wrote on his Telegram channel.
"The strike hit one of the medical facilities, killing a young doctor, who has worked there only for a few days, and injuring a nurse," Mrochko said, adding that medics are fighting for her life.
Russian forces targeted the city of Kherson and other places in Kherson Oblast on July 31, killing four people and injuring 18, including a 16-year-old girl, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Latvia offers to export Ukrainian grain through its ports
Didzis Šmits, Latvia's Minister of Agriculture, has said exporting Ukrainian grain through Latvian ports is a possible scenario
Šmits said exports through the Baltic corridor is not an easy task, and delivering grain to Latvia will be a challenge for logisticians, but it isn’t impossible.
Šmits pointed out that the capacities of Baltic ports make it possible to export grain from Ukraine, and the key challenge is the different widths of railway tracks, but the cargo might be quickly transferred from one train to another.
"Certainly, we need to do the maths. It's clear that it will be complex and expensive, but if there are no other solutions, the corridor through the Baltic states is a solution," the minister explained.
Wagner is using military storage facilities in Belarus
Russia's Wagner mercenary group is using military warehouses at a disused Belarusian military camp, monitoring group Belarusian Hajun reported on August 1.
Belarusian Hajun believes the warehouses began to be used by the group around July 18th and are located at Paplavy, a village 30 minutes by car from the the Wagner camp at Tsel.
Since July, the anti-government group has been tracking Wagner convoys as they cross into Belarus and verifying the equipment the group is bringing with them.
On July 14, Belarusian state media reported that Wagner mercenaries were in the country to train Belarusian territorial defense forces. They may be supplanting the Russian military as the Belarusian military's key training partner, the Institute for the Study of War said in their August 1 report.
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko allegedly helped broker a deal for Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and his troops to relocate to Belarus after their armed "rebellion" in late June stopped short of reaching Moscow.
The Ukrainian authorities reported that as of July 22, about 5,000 Wagner mercenaries are in Belarus, but the border is secure and is being monitored for additional risks.
Ukraine's National Resistance Center stated on July 26 that the organization was recruiting fighters in Belarus, under the condition that the new recruits are ready "to participate in hostilities in Poland and Lithuania.
On July 29, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that more than 100 mercenaries were deployed to the Grodno area in Belarus near the Suwalki Gap, an area southwest of the Lithuania-Poland border, between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
He stated that the fighters could infiltrate Poland from Belarus in a "hybrid attack."
Poland had announced on July 18 that Poland's border with Belarus will be reinforced with two additional military brigades due to the Wagner Group's presence.
In March, the Lithuanian parliament officially recognized the Wagner as a terrorist organization. The resolution stated that their members pose a threat to the security of the Lithuanian state and society.
The Wagner Group claimed on July 30 that it had "indefinitely" suspended recruitment of new members as it possesses sufficiently "large personnel reserves."
However, it did not mention whether this decision extends to recruiting new members in Belarus where a significant number of the contractors are based at the moment.